


In the Mountains

by Dracoduceus



Series: Target Practice Anniversary Event [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Forest Ranger McCree, I don't want to tag too much because it's just a small snippet, ex-detective McCree, part of a larger piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 14:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15687090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: Ranger McCree finds that the mountains have their own rules.---Part of a larger piece (probably for NaNoWriMo this year) where Ranger McCree is investigating animal attacks and comes across a town that doesn't fear animal attacks. As he investigates further he finds Hanzo, a local animal trainer, that everyone seems to have stories of.Even stories they were told by their grandparents.





	In the Mountains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lyall_Lupa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyall_Lupa/gifts).



> Part of a larger piece I may expand on later. 
> 
> For the Target Practice Discord Anniversary event. Prompt: Pets.

Hanzo had a lot of pets.

Like,  _ a lot _ of pets.

Enough that he employed his own vet that specializes in exotic animals  _ and _ said vet was there every day.

He had cautiously asked the girl at the pet store about it and she had shrugged. They got a lot of their animals from him, she had explained. And basic animal training was done by Hanzo once a week in the community center (in the winter) or in the local park (in the summer). Anyone that wanted specialized training had to go to him.

The café owner, a big burly man that looked more like the biker type than a baker, had told him that Hanzo does a lot of rescues.

Still curious, McCree asked around, wanting to know more about the mysterious Hanzo but found, unsurprising in hindsight, that people were reluctant to speak to an outsider.

Interesting thing was, though…everyone had a pet of some kind. It was usually some kind of dog.

Well, that was misleading. Every  _ family _ had at least one pet. Most had at least two.

They followed their families around like furry shadows, would walk the children to school before running back home. The café and bakeries and restaurants all allowed dogs who all lay quiet and obedient beneath their master’s chairs. Children misbehaved more than the dogs did.

One morning McCree watched a woman open the front door of her house to let the dog out. It trotted down the stairs, looked both ways before crossing, and went to the nearby park. Upon seeing the dog, a little girl waved goodbye to her friends and walked with her hand in his ruff back to the house as if the dog had been sent to pick the girl up from the park!

The longer McCree sat there, the more he saw this trend. Some of the dogs played with the kids, their eyes and ears as alert as the parents that also stood or sat around.

Someone sat down next to him and McCree jumped. The girl from the pet shop shoved an ice cream cone in his hand. “Weird, isn’t it?” she asked. “It took me a while to get used to, too.”

“You guys really like your pets,” McCree said weakly. He juggled the cone and patted his pockets for his wallet. “How much-”

The girl waved it off. “On me, this time,” she said with a smirk. She licked her ice cream and turned back to the playground.

“I’m surprised…”

“Nearly everyone has a dog,” the girl agreed. “I don’t only because I’m allergic.” She glanced sidelong at McCree. “It’s the mountains,” she said, nodding to the purple shadows in the distance that rose like sheer walls. “Hanzo trained Meka up as well as a guard dog for me, though.”

McCree took that Meka was an animal that she wasn’t allergic to. He ate his ice cream to keep himself from asking too many questions.

“I’m surprised you noticed it so quickly,” the girl continued, watching the kids. “Most people take weeks to see it. Maybe it’s because you’re staying with him.”

She sounded wistful and McCree wondered to himself how bad her crush for Hanzo was. “I’m just observant, is all.”

“I suppose you would have to be, being a detective and all,” the girl agreed and smirked at McCree’s shock. “Word travels fast. You should know that by now.”

“I’m used to the city,” Jesse muttered into his ice cream.

The girl laughed. A dog wandered over, a big shaggy thing that looked half wolf. At a hand signal from the girl next to him, it turned course and lumbered away. “I was too,” she told him. “Until I moved here. I stayed with Hanzo for a while too.”

They sat and talked for a while before the girl had to go back to the pet shop. She introduced herself as Hana and invited him over sometime – “from one ex-city-person to another,” she had added with a laugh. McCree had begun to wonder if he had to gently break it to her that he was  _ gay _ .

McCree found Hanzo’s vet at the pet store, loading up a pallet of what he assumed was food or something. “Perfect timing,” the man said cheerfully. “Were you ready to drive back up? I know Hanzo dropped you off earlier today.”

“Yeah,” McCree agreed faintly. His mind spun with the strange intelligence of the dogs in town.

“Great!” the vet said, closing the bed of the truck and patting it fondly. “You okay?” he asked a few minutes later as they left down, passing the strange totems marked with gold paint. “You seem…”

McCree carefully chose his words. “I’m impressed with the dogs,” he said.

“Hanzo’s a great trainer,” the vet said with a bright laugh. “Been here as long as anyone can remember. Up here, so far from everyone else, we’re kind of on our own. If something happens sometimes we need to handle it ourselves.” He paused and waved at a jogger and the large some-kind-of-hound that loped beside him down the winding mountain road. “For all our pretty modern veneering it’s still just as wild here as it was a hundred years ago. The dogs are a safety measure.”

Thinking back to the dogs he had seen, Jesse realized that they were all hounds or Labradors or other medium to large-size breeds. The working and hunting dogs from pitbulls with their friendly grins and blocky heads to retrievers and water dogs and elkhounds and sheepdogs. To be fair he  _ had _ seen smaller dogs but they had been puppies with too-big paws and ears and there had been another dog with them at all times like a parent watching a child.

“Do you have issues with animals?” McCree asked, spine straightening.

The vet shrugged. “Something like that,” he agreed. “But not that bad. Hanzo’s an expert trainer – you should watch him sometime, it’s amazing! It’s just that the animals of the mountain aren’t used to human habitation even after all these years. We got a lot of cougars or in lean months wolves but that’s what the dogs are for. Boars sometimes dig up gardens and yards.” Misreading McCree’s look, he flashed a grin at him then turned back to the road. “Nature’s just trying to reclaim what’s hers,” he said gently. “She’s trying to take care of her own.”

They fell silent for a while as the vet navigated the winding mountain roads. They passed through a patch of mist that made McCree feel like they were about to step through into some magical realm. The mountains were like that: full of steep climbs and drops, bobbing and weaving through cloud and around trees.

“Why does Hanzo live so far away?” McCree found himself asking.

“For space,” the vet said easily. “That’s right, you haven’t seen everything in the day, huh? It was gross out the day you came up.” He clicked his tongue. “You’ll see. Just over this ridge here is the start of his property.”

The road climbed up and up, feeling uncomfortably to McCree like a roller coaster. At its crest the vet stopped the truck and let McCree look.

Before them the incline of the mountain dropped in sheer walls down to a lush valley. Half of it seemed occupied by trees, the other with lush meadows with long grass. It looked like something out of a painting and it took McCree’s breath away. The night he arrived he had been too carsick, unused to the invisible bumps and twists and turns of the mountain roads to appreciate the view.

Cupped at the very bottom of the valley was a lake that trailed into a thick river. At this distance he could easily see Hanzo’s house but not the man. His seemingly hundreds of pets were little dots among the waving grass, his larger livestock animals more visible in their paddocks.

“Wow,” McCree breathed.

“Yeah,” the vet agreed. “I see it almost every day and I’m still amazed by it.” he shifted the car into gear and began driving downwards. “When it rains there are hundreds of waterfalls along the walls of the valley and sometimes the winds are high enough that they flow up rather than down.”

McCree snorted. “You’re pulling my leg.”

Throwing his head back, the vet laughed. “I’m not, promise!” he swore. “But maybe you’ll see it for yourself.”

Something white flashed out of the corner of his eyes and McCree whirled. “Did you see that?” He looked back at the vet in time to see the flash of white again, moving past his window. “Stop the car!”

The vet looked alarmed and hit the breaks. Almost before the car had stopped entirely, McCree had scrambled out and was looking around at the thick trees lining the road. He ran across it to the edge of the barrier to look over the steep cliff and the trees twenty feet below.

“Dude,” the vet said, leaning out the window. “Pro tip: if you see something dangerous, stay in the car.” When McCree looked back at him, he saw he had a shaky grin. “You never know what’s out there.”

McCree looked back out over the trees. “I thought I saw something?”

“Like what?”

Shaking his head, McCree stared out over the trees. “I…I don’t know.” He walked carefully back to the passenger side of the truck. “I thought I saw something out the window. Like…” he tried to piece together what he had seen but it was such an impossible sight.

The vet chuckled as he climbed back in the cab. “They say that there’s a spirit on the mountain,” he said gently and shifted the car back in gear. “Perhaps that’s what you saw. You can hear him at night sometimes.”

“Maybe,” McCree agreed faintly. “Have  _ you _ seen him?”

The vet laughed and McCree expected him to brush it off as a joke, an urban legend, perhaps just a local myth. “I have,” he said to McCree’s surprise. “He saved me once. It’s why I stick around here. It’s the least I can do after he’d done so much for me.”

They fell into silence as the vet drove up to Hanzo’s home. Soon there were animals on either side, dogs of all sizes racing the truck down the road. They swarmed the vet as he got out of the cab and greeted McCree excitedly with cold noses and wagging tails.

Petting them, McCree glanced back at the mountain, finding the road with some difficulty. “How was your day in town?” a voice asked and McCree jumped, turning to find Hanzo leaning against a nearby fence, his hands clasped in front of him. He was attended by two dogs that had to be at least part wolf.

He was also shirtless and McCree struggled to keep his eyes raised, to meet Hanzo’s own so that he wouldn’t stare and drool at his muscular chest. Hanzo smirked and McCree was certain he knew McCree’s dilemma so why bother now?

“Learned a lot of interesting things,” McCree said. “But out here the world seems different than the city.”

Hanzo snorted. “That’s because in the city you’re held by a leash and forced to heel,” he said. “Out here you’re nobody’s pet.”

“Except the spirit of the mountain, perhaps,” McCree laughed. “Or so I would think. That’s how it was back home.”

The look on Hanzo’s face changed slightly into something that McCree couldn’t quite read. It was thoughtful and playful and strangely knowing. “Perhaps,” Hanzo agreed with a smirk that sent heat coiling low in McCree’s belly. “The spirit of the mountain keeps no pets that don’t want to be kept. I’m sure that you would make a good pet. Just wild enough to be interesting.”

“Woof,” McCree said a little shakily.

Hanzo’s golden eyes were hypnotic, his easy confidence putting McCree off-balance. “Good boy.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the mess. 
> 
> ~DC


End file.
